Portal | Cracks in the System

[Music] I know this is difficult but try to picture a portal playthrough where you don't know that the cake is a lie I mean a first playthrough of the game probably want to take you any more than four or five hours however it's absolutely a perfect game in that every single intro that builds on its ideas and design philosophies personally I'll always prefer a game that leaves me wanting more over a game that makes me feel sick and bloated after chewing it for 40 hours but enough stalling let's move on to one of portals coolest aspects that sort of been lost a time the slow reveal that everyone in Aperture Science is dead and that GLaDOS is completely nuts I say this has been lost a time because just about everyone's heard the famous line the cake is a lie however imagine that you don't know that and now you just bought the orange box and booted up the game on day one unsure of what you would find you wake up in the relaxation vault with some pleasant elevator music playing out over the radio and a robotic voice which is out a little bit as it explains the nature of today's experiment clearly a bit of foreshadowing but it was probably just some issue with the language protection no big deal I'm sure whoever's in charge is already working on the bug then after going through a few test chambers you start to realize that all of the observation chambers are empty and it occurs to you that you haven't had any interaction with the humans so far in the game weird but our one companion through all of this the voice on the speaker seems to have things relatively under control a little uncanny maybe but she hasn't given me any real cause for concern yet then you get to chamber aids and think to yourself wait if this stuff will kill whoever's holding the portal gun why the hell is it a part of the test surely just failing the test on contact with the floor would suffice then you inevitably realize that the water isn't supposed to be there and that there aren't any people around to clean it up anyway as you finish the test and with the lack of human involvement on your mind you realize that these elevators and wall panels are filthy compared to how sterile and clean this place clearly was in its heyday for convenience I'm going to pretend that you know GLaDOS is may in this early on moving on you get to chamber 16 and GLaDOS tells you that the test chamber has been replaced with a live fire course for military androids this might get you thinking about why GLaDOS doesn't just kill you outright maybe it's some twisted loophole she's found in her the laws of robotics she can't just murder people she has to test them but then why is everybody missing are we just centuries in the future and everyone's abandoned Aperture Science but then why would she be killing off her last batch of test subjects is she just completely insane but restricted by her programming all questions that will be answered by the end of the game however a couple of other interesting things happened hearing chamber 16 firstly we see our first doug rattman hideout not that we would know his name and we realized that there was at least one survivor of whatever happened here as for whether or not they're still alive that's a mystery but from this first hideout we can see that they were stockpiling canned food so they were either trapped in the facility miles underground or they were hiding from the combine invasion on a surface either way they've clearly gone completely nuts here we also see our first instance of the cake is a lie along with a clever him for the puzzle ahead where Rat Man has drawn a weighted storage cube dropping onto a turret from above one other question that's asked in chamber 16 at least heard sentient I mean why else would you use scare tactics against them and why else would military androids be designed to speak I mean they even scream when you emancipate them and for that matter so do the radios interesting that they would hint that the androids might be sentient right before the most infamous chamber number 17 so with this in mind we move on to chamber 17 and this is where things get stupid speculative the companion view probably the funniest physics object in gaming it's deadpan introduction is a bit of comedic genius after 16 test chambers with this uncanny voice saying mildly suspect thanks to us and putting us some sterile life-threatening danger this completely lifeless cube slapping heavily on the ground is just so easy to get affectionate towards all because it has a little pink heart on it mmm anyways love for the companion cube aside there's something sinister going on in this level and it adds a lot of new context to a few things that would arguably be confirmed in portal 2 so basically is the companion cube sentient wait don't click off like I said a part of this is sort of confirmed in Portal 2 firstly GLaDOS constantly talks about how the companion cube should be ignored if it ever threatens to stab you or speech to you or does anything animate the enrichment center reminds you that the weighted companion cube will never present a statue and that cannot be you could say the chamber 17 is more of a psychological experiment on the effects of isolation it'd be a damn effective one considering I'm even writing this now clearly GLaDOS making you incinerate the companion cube would be part of the psychological experiment but it's oddly specific especially considering that this all happens immediately after we're introduced to the rat man hideouts and the idea that the centuries might be sentient speaking of rat man we find a second hideout here clearly rime and grew attached the companion cube which would explain cloud AUSA's warnings about it speaking if I had to guess based on his poetry I'd say the rat man went nuts after being forced to kill his companion human but we also see some login information here I just on the wall hidden behind it attached surveillance camera username see Johnson password tier 3 if we go to Aperture Science comm we find that it's now promoting portal 2 and the command prompt isn't accessible anymore however thanks to the incredibly helpful wayback machine we can use the site as it was intended in 2007 I won't linger on this because it's not that relevant but if we log in with the information rat man wrote down we can enter notes to get a lot of info on aperture Sciences history apply to fill out a hilarious application to work at Aperture Science and typing the cake is a lie gives us some info about the quote unquote recent changes that have been going on in the company it's hilarious and well worth your time so link to in the description however it doesn't give us all that much insight into GLaDOS as mental state and doesn't say anything about other sentient machines in the facility since this isn't a game theory or anything I'll move on past the companion cube soon before I go though in Portal 2 it's revealed that tons of the computers in Aperture Science are sentient door mechanisms of all panels AI course entries and I really don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that the cubes might be also especially considering that we get the achievement fratricide when killing the companion cube fratricide being the act of killing a sibling however the most blatant piece of evidence that the companion cube might be sentient is that this is called the Aperture Science emergency intelligence incinerator you did it the weighted companion cube certainly brought you good luck however it I accompanied you for the rest of the test and unfortunately must be euthanized please escort your companion cube to the Aperture Science emergency intelligence incinerator hell I wouldn't put it past operator science and cloud Oz to make the portal gun sentient but what's so cool and relevant to the point of this essay is that I'm sitting here speculating about whether a box with a little heart on it might be alive this game is so good at building up intrigue and like half-life to almost all of its questions can be answered with enough observation and such a short bare-bones and minimalistic game it's absolutely incredible the amount of interesting thoughts you'll be having over the course of it another reason that this achievement might be called fratricide is revealed in the next test chamber number 18 GLaDOS drops all pretenses here she opens up with you will be baked and then there will be cake well as we know the cake is a lie we find another rat man hideout in the beginning of this level that reminds us of this before moving on this hideout also confirms that the water scene and many of the test chambers is indeed because of flooding after this and the next test chamber GLaDOS tries to burn us alive ensuring us that all testing equipment will survive in a fire so maybe there's still hope for the companion cube the face where we pretend [Music] we are very happy for your success we are throwing a party in honor of your apprentice success place it in than I ever started with your arms at your sides when [Music] testing area but anyways we escape the fire pit and by following Batman's direction throughout this escape and during the final confrontation we really start to understand GLaDOS this ending sheds a lot of light on our insanity so glad losses personality is controlled by four personality cores morality curiosity intelligence and anger thinking about how differently she acts after each core is destroyed we can start to understand GLaDOS his behavior much better morality core is keeping her from murdering you outright instead of testing so when it's destroyed she instantly turns on rocket defenses and neurotoxin emitters when it's destroyed she stops being polite fully insane and starts being pretty mean about it taking on a much more sinister tone of voice as if her true self was finally released kami did you just put your sign saying we don't know what it does into an virtual science emergency intelligence incinerator to be the dumbest thing good news I figured out what that thing you just incinerated it was the morality core they installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the enrichment center with a deadly the tax she also reveals that she was the one who killed all of the Aperture Science employees but there's no telling how long ago that was next up is the Curiosity Core the reason she tested in the first place when we destroy all the selected classes are anger and her intelligence she admits that with curiosity and morality gone she'd love to start getting the neurotoxin into you faster she no longer has any reason to want you to stay alive whatsoever even if you were still testing next the intelligence corps once you destroyed this all GLaDOS is capable of a stupid aimless anger and almost all of the line she uses here are just childish mocking making fun of your voice and your impending death every single thing you've ever done including this thing you're not smart you're not a scientist you're not a doctor boy where did your life go so wrong with intelligence destroyed she also admits that she doesn't know what's going on on the surface she's of course referring to the combines roll over earth and if Rat Man could escape and chose not to then she'd be right about us being better off down here each one of these cores completely reflects on her personality her curiosity driving her to do things like the companion cube isolation experiment the sentient androids the rest of her testing her anger driving her to try to murder you with testing and killing all the aperture employees and her morality core restraining her from killing you using conventional methods instead using turrets and water pits obviously there have been a lot of parallels with my recent half-life 2 video I've been talking about how much is left to inference or subtly hinted that over the course of the game thus making the world seem so much bigger than it is it really stands as a testament to Erik Wolpaw ability to tell a story by sprinkling hints all around in the perfect places I mean this is probably the shortest game of its budget and technical ambitions that I've ever played yet I asked myself a dozen questions a minute and any given playthrough like I said in that half-life 2 video I tend to judge in our pieces work by how interesting the thoughts I have with it are and portal is yet another fantastic example of why [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 1,504,958

Rating: 4.9308186 out of 5

Keywords: portal, Kim swift, valve, gabe, newell, puzzle, explained, theory, companion, cube, sentient, Erik, Wolpaw, game, design, analysis, essay, discussion

Id: N8AJ3bcBktc

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019

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